Well, I guess that based on the business plan draft what type of employees will this business have? what will be their roles and responsabilities

Instructions: Submit all the following via Blackboard messages in a single Word document; Submit with “ Homework Assignment No. 5 ” in the Subject line of your email. Typical Attachment File name: “Your Name, Homework No. 5, Date Submitted” (Due 9/29/2020, by 12 Noon)

A. (10 Points) Business Plan Assignment: Business Plan: The MARKET draft (See page 234- 239)

a. Strategy:

B. (20 Points) Review the Chapter 9 Mini-Case: “YAK Milk” (P. 312) and answer the following questions:

a. How did Dongzhou Gongbu “discover” the new product?

b. What was the “total product”?

c. Who do you imagine is the target market for Yak milk? Why?

d. How might he use this in advertising?

e. Can you think of another product that is basically the same as the competition and has been positioned much differently to command a higher price?

Attitude as the determination of success

Summary

In his life-changing speech that broke the internet, Robert Kiyosaki talks about the reasons why people that are rich stay rich and those that are poor remain poor. He talks about how he learned about money from his "rich" dad, who was his friend's father, and from his "poor" dad, who was his father (Kiyosaki, 2019). With his father being the head of education, he explained why schools don't teach about money, yet in his opinion, the purpose of education is to get a job, and the goal of getting a job is to earn money. This makes him wonder why schools don't teach about money, which his father responded that the schools taught what the government let them. Robert learned about money from playing monopoly with his father. His father advised that one of the ways of getting money entails playing a monopoly in real-life where assets that have been acquired become assets that are bigger.

Robert states that rich, poor, poverty, middle class begins with a fundamental attitude. Poverty, middle class, among others, get passed on in the family. He states that the design of the school system is created to teach people to become employees and never teaches about money. It is essential for one to know things that are not taught in school like finances. Robert argues that most teachers in schools are out of ethics that are required in the sense that they teach subjects that they themselves do not practice, which makes it impossible for them to equip the students with the necessary knowledge. They mostly teach subjects because they get paid to teach and don't practice. According to him, therefore, most teachers in schools are fake because they teach things they don't do. One becomes what they say they are, which means that the attitude that one has is what determines success.

Whether I accept his premise

I accept Robert Kiyosaki's sentiments that while school is meant for one to be able to get a job, and the job for the generation of money, it does not make sense why schools fail to teach about money. I also agree that most teachers in schools engage in teaching subjects that they do not practice for the purpose of getting paid and not that the topics are of any benefit to the students. It is critical that young people find their game to obtain what they desire in life in terms of money. The systems of education are structured in such a way that sometimes students end up learning things that they will not apply or benefit from in real life.

References

Katz, J. A., & Green, R. P. (2018). Entrepreneurial small business. McGraw-Hill Education.

1. Differentiate between customer roles and profiles, and state how developing these helps the young entrepreneur define their target market. The customer roles refer to the roles tied into buying and using products or services. When you buy it yourself and for yourself, you are the end user, and the purchaser. When you buy a product for someone else, you are the purchaser, but the end user is the person receiving the product. Another role are influencers, people with the ability to make recommendations to other people in any of the other roles. Understanding these roles is essential to understanding who your customer is. With customer profiles, the most important initial piece of information for the start-up is understanding at a deep level what the customer is like. Face-to-face interviews with people identified as potential customers with the goal to get an unbiased sense of the ways they thing about dealing with the issue your product or service helps resolve or improve. Then with these interview answers and the demographics you can build one or more customer profiles. The point of identifying the customer roles and building the customer profile is to help you clarify who would be the best customer for your business (your target market). (Pg.279-280)

2. Name and define the two major categories of marketing research. Provide examples for each category. Primary research and secondary research. Primary research is an approach to researching based on the gathering of new information, using techniques such as interviewing, surveying, and observation to answer a specific marketing question. Examples include the interviews you performed creating the customer profile. Other techniques include observation, focus groups, and surveying. Secondary research is an approach to researching based on the use of existing information, often from government, commercial or academic databases and research efforts often gathered for some other reason than your specific question, but can be just as useful. The challenge in secondary analysis is finding good data. (Pg.285)

3. Describe how to construct a value proposition and state the importance of the value proposition. What is the difference between a benefit and a feature of your product? Create a value proposition for your business by replacing the text in parentheses as it reflects to your product, market, and strategy. For (target customer) Who (statement of the need or opportunity) The (business name) is a (product or service category) That (statement of key benefit- that is, compelling reason to buy/purchase) Unlike (primary competitive alternative) Our business (statement of primary differentiation) Is available (where) The goal of the value proposition is to create and occupy a space inside the target customer's head. A feature of your product is a specific aspect that is unique. Customers buy a product or service because of the benefits they get from using your offering to get their job done. (Pg. 292-295)

4. Outline the importance of marketing and tell why a marketing plan is important for both start-up firms and established organizations. Marketing is one of the basic building blocks for your business plan and your road map to what you want to do. Successful businesses are constantly tweaking their marketing to accommodate necessary adjustments found during evaluation and control reviews. For start-ups, they help define how the firm will build its brand and relationship with customers. For established businesses, the marketing plan becomes a key step in imagining how a firm might reposition itself and maintain its most important relationship, the one it has with customers. (Pg. 296)

5. Describe the four stages of the product life cycle and explain how companies market each stage of their products. The four stages of the product life cycle are the introduction stage, the growth stage, the maturity stage, and the decline stage. The introduction stage is when new products are introduced to the larger market. During the introduction stage, from a marketing standpoint, the more innovative the product, the slower the sales, because fewer customers are comfortable with such products. During the growth stage, acceptance of the product increases rapidly. Prices tend to drop as production becomes more efficient and competition increases. From a marketing standpoint, consumers are aware of your product and know how it will make their lives better. Once the rapid growth begins to slow down, the product enters the maturity stage. Promotions such as coupons, rebates, or multipacks flourish during this stage. A product may stay in the maturity stage for a long period of time. Once a product begins its permanent decline, this decline can be slow or fast, stead or unsteady. Both sales and profits fall during this stage. Advertising and promotion expenses are usually nearly eliminated at this point. Some products' decline is permanent. (Pg. 306-308)

Chapter 10:

1. State why sales forecasts are important and Identify the sales forecasting methods outlined in the text. Sales forecasting is important because they will feed directly into your financial projections. Sales determine your profitability and, ultimately, whether you will stay in business or not. Sales projections are also the basis for estimating how much money you will generate in the future. Estimate the time it will take you to sell your inventory based on the length of time it took others to sell a single similar item. If you have a product and service tied together, such as laying sod for new lawns, you can estimate the total market by looking at projected new homes being built in your area. If you are opening a restaurant, you need to find the number of potential customers within you market that fit within your seating capacity. You also need to consider your hit rate, or how many prospects you need to approach in order to make one sale. (Pg. 356)

2. What are the different steps involved in the process of personal selling? Personal selling is the process in which a business owner sells his products and service; it includes prospect and evaluate, prepare, present, close, and follow-up. 1. Prospect and evaluate: Thoroughly knowing the target market are key and critical. Customers may prospect themselves by asking for more information or responding to a direct mail advertisement. Business owners may buy mailing lists of prospective clients as well. 2. Prepare: Preparation means finding out about the clients before approaching them. At the end of this phase, the initial contact is made or the appointment is set up. 3. Present: During the presentation phase, the salesperson presents a logical and compelling argument for purchasing the product. Most salespeople emphasize the needs or wants their product can satisfy.

Close: Customers nearly always have objections and the good salesperson is prepared to answer these objections. Once the material has been presented and the objections answered, the salesperson needs to close the sale. The close is the commitment from the customer. 5. Follow-up: Finally, the close is not the end of the sale. The important objective of follow-up is to make the customer feel at ease. (Pg. 347)

3. What is customer relationship management (CRM)? What are the different strategies of CRM? The name for the general approach to keeping customers is called customer retention (CM). CM focuses on satisfying customers after the sale, and managing the marketing efforts of a business with the customers to maximize their loyalty to and purchases from the business. There are two major elements to CM. One is handling problems that crop up after a sale, and the other called customer relationship management (CRM), which focuses on identifying customers and their purchases, and managing a business owner's marketing efforts with customers to maximize their loyalty to and purchases from the business owner's business. The strategies behind CRM depend on what kind of customer business owners are seeking—new or existing and what they are trying to sell them—a new product or one they already have. These variables lead to four approaches. Selling the same products to the same customers is called a market penetration approach, while selling the same customers a new product is called product expansion. If business owners are looking at people who have not been customers, they might seek a market expansion strategy to sell their existing products to them, or a diversification strategy if they are trying to sell newly developed products. (Pg.350)

4. What are the two steps in customer relationship management (CRM)? What is the goal of these two steps and how do you know your CRM effort is working? The steps involved in customer relationship management (CRM) are: (1) Gathering the data, and (2) Analyzing the data. Gathering the Data: The key to CRM is the data on current or prospective customers. Given the power of repeat selling, the most valuable data comes from the existing customers. For all existing customers there are two kinds of data—contact data and performance data. Analyzing the data: Lets business owners summarize information by date, by product or service being sold, by groups of customers, or by the purchases of an individual person or firm. Reports such as this can help business owners decide how to operate several key aspects of your marketing effort. The goal of all this data gathering and analysis is to increase your sales and help make your marketing efforts as economical as possible. The proof of a CRM effort is seen in (1) higher levels of customer loyalty in existing customers, (2) higher levels of purchasing from existing customers, and (3) more tracked prospects making initial purchases from a business owner. (Pg. 352)

5. Differentiate between follow-through and follow-up. Fundamentally, the keys to customer service are follow-through and follow-up. Follow-through refers to business owners doing what they said they would do. If a customer mentions a concern or problem, business owner will try to fix it. If business owners remember to keep up their customer relationship management (CRM) database, a good CRM system will remind them of the promises they have made. Follow-up refers to the contacts business owners periodically make with customers in order to remind them of their business, and their interest in the customers' business. This can be done through personal contacts by phone, mail, or personal visits, although increasingly contact is done electronically through e-mails, electronic newsletters, discussion lists, or interactive web services like blogs or wikis. (Pg. 354)